


flashbacks are a little like glitching, but less fancy, more human

by possessedradios



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Does Is Hilbert Gay And Sad? The Answer Might Surprise You, Human Experimentation, Look guys it's only one more month before the show ends, M/M, POV Second Person, So it's about time I started writing about characters who've been dead for ages, Takes place mostly during "Don't Poke The Bear", Wannabe character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-06 21:52:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12826866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possessedradios/pseuds/possessedradios
Summary: Turns out no matter the name he uses, Dmitri Volodin just seems to have a thing for communications officers.





	flashbacks are a little like glitching, but less fancy, more human

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I’m still crying about Hilbert.  
> I started this months ago, spent the whole day today relistening to episodes and am Having Feelings about Dr. Trashbag-why-do-I-love-him-so-much, so I pulled up the document and just rewrote everything. Also I won’t ever be able to write something that isn’t 2nd person POV ever again, I think, sorry ‘bout that. It neatly complements my messy writing style, y’know.

“Open your eyes, very wide,” you say and he does immediately, so eager to follow your orders now, and you check his pupil reaction but get lost somewhere inside your head halfway through.

Full of life and very brown and intelligent. You like his eyes. You have no idea when that happened. The outside you, Dr. Alexander Hilbert, comments on the reaction time and moves on, your body follows, but the inside you, Dmitri Volodin, whatever shattered pieces there are left, is stuck in a loop, needle scratching on the record, freeze and over-and-over-and-over, the same thoughts again and again, like Hera glitching, the realization leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.

You like his eyes. You don’t understand half of the things he says, but you like the way he talks too, Eiffel is full of contradictions. He’s lazy and cynical, cruelly so, self-destructive in an oddly passive kind of way, and you know what brought him here, so it makes sense, you think. It’s a reasonable reaction to his past. And despite all this he’s bright and full of enthusiasm, the most optimistic of all of you, as if to prove a point to himself, as if he’s being kept alive by nothing but spite. Spite is good. Spite makes people stronger, more determined. 

You like Eiffel’s jokes, even if you don’t get them. You wish he’d be laughing now. You stare at him for a few seconds and realize how different he actually is from-

No matter. But you have to pause for a second, try to shake the thought, don’t succeed. Remind yourself that Eiffel is, first of all, part of your experiment, of your research. Scientists are not supposed to _like_ their research, are not supposed to grow attached, develop feelings.

… But ‘are not supposed’ has never stopped you.

_Pause._

_Rewind._

_Play._

Kissing someone in zero gravity is surprisingly hard, but you somehow manage to have Lambert pinned against the door of the storage closet. It lacks even the idea of dignity, but you don’t care about dignity, never have, and Lambert seems to have stopped thinking anything of it as well. He’s stopped telling you that it’s unprofessional, too, somewhere between falling in love with you and not caring much about anything anymore because one third of the crew is-

You try to not think about that part. 

Hui and Fourier could tell you a thing or two about how hard it is to kiss someone in zero gravity, you think, and then regret thinking about that, because Hui will never tell anyone anything ever again, and you think about him dying, think about yourself desperately trying to save him, the captain talking at you behind your back with a voice full of tears that don’t show on her face, think about her asking you, again and again, whether he’ll make it, and-

_I am … trying my best_

-you think about yourself desperately trying to save him, knowing that you won’t be able to, knowing that he will die. You, watching him die, you, entering the lab, you, stopping the act, no more Dr. Selberg, Dmitri Volodin now, writing down as much as you can still remember through the mess that is your head- That’s not how it was supposed to go- Sure it’s trial and error, but that’s _not how it was supposed to go-_

You kiss Lambert a little more fiercely because it helps forgetting, and he tightens his grip around your waist, but only for a second. After only a second he pushes you away and turns his head to the side, coughing. He doesn’t stop for a long time, face flushed, breathing hard, tears in his eyes. He’s felt bad the whole day, he told you. You observe him with a vague sense of detachment, put the pieces together and wish a second meteor shower would strike and kill you all. You can’t do this again.

(This is foolish. You’d join Goddard Futuristics again. You’d come up here again.)

And you do it again. A few hours later, Lambert is coughing up blood and you push him down on your examination table instead of against a door. The lips you kissed a little while back are red and his breathing is raspy and you shout around orders Lovelace readily follows while Fourier is standing in the door crying. 

You do it again. A few hours later, Dr. Elias Selberg watches communications officer Samuel Lambert die.

_Pause._

_Fast-forward._

_Play._

Dr. Alexander Hilbert will not watch Eiffel die.

Decima is better now. You are better now.

The outside you manages to continue the examination even while the inside you thinks about the past, thinks about Eiffel.

You’ve never kissed him. You’ve seen him naked, because the Blessed Eternal stole a screwdriver, but you’ve never kissed him. 

It is weird, that you’d still feel so attached to him. But emotions never made sense to you, anyway. You tend to avoid them whenever possible. Communications officers make it impossible. New hypothesis. Already tested.

Kepler is here now, breathing down your neck, is telling a story that sounds incredibly made-up, and while thinking about determination, you realize your own determination is still there. It was hard to remember it, but it’s still there, and you remember what it feels like because you get all excited when you realize Decima has entered a new stage. This is what you joined Goddard for. This is what you’ve been working towards for the better part of your life. You’re fully here again, Dr. Dmitri/Elias/Alexander Volodin/Selberg/Hilbert, you all have the same goal, and you just got a huge step closer, you mumble to yourself, forget the context of your whole existence for a few minutes.

Kepler hits you, hard, pushes you against one of the shelves, because you got _too_ excited, too excited to hear Eiffel’s question. You hear his panicked voice, are you okay doc, it sounds a little like Lovelace’s panicked voice to you, doc, will he make it-

You don’t know, how are you supposed to know.

The moment is gone. Dr. Elias Selberg is dead. It feels like Dr. Dmitri Volodin has never really existed in the first place. Why else would it be so hard to find that person inside of you now? Hilbert, they all call you that. Even Lovelace has started doing it. Hilbert listens, _you_ listen to Kepler, and-

What happens next is all blurry, Kepler takes everything you worked for, decades worth of sleepless nights, away from you. Your resistance crumbles within seconds, if there’s one thing you know, it’s how to stay alive.

And at least you won’t have to watch Eiffel die.

You look at him and your chest feels tight and you remember how he _almost_ died and then almost died, the first time you saved him, the second time he brought back the SI-5. You wish you could hate him for that.

You don’t.

Instead you look at him and feel like you felt when you looked at Lambert. They’re so different. Feels all the same.

Like Hera glitching. The realization leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. You ripped out her brain. You think looking at Eiffel rips out your heart, whatever shattered pieces there are left.

**Author's Note:**

> Writing Hilbert is hard, because screwing up grammar all the time felt wrong while writing, but I still wanted to find the right “voice” for him. Did it work? Who knows! I’m @possessed-radios on tumblr, come scream at me about how there’s only one month left before the show ends, if you want.


End file.
